COVER STORY Robin Mills met Sam Brown in West Dorset
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© Sam Brown Photograph by Robin Mills
oming to live here in Dorset 6 years ago has just been fantastic. I teach ukulele 2 days a week in Oxfordshire, usually arriving home on a Thursday night around midnight. I get out of the car, and before I even think about going indoors I stand outside the house and enjoy the peace—just the sounds of the countryside at night. And I love that there’s no light pollution. I was born in Stratford in east London, where my Dad comes from. My Mum, Vicki, came from Liverpool. At the age of 17, in the late ‘50s; she was with a group called the Vernons Girls, as a singer and dancer. They came to perform in London, and despite being strictly chaperoned all the time she met my Dad, the singer and guitarist Joe Brown, and they married. I was born in 1964, and we continued living in Essex until 1977. I have a brother, Pete, to whom I’m very close; although together we can be a bit frightening. If you met my Dad you’d know why, and if you met my Nan you’d know why even more. She was 6ft 1in and looked like John Wayne in True Grit, but she was a lovely East End lady, and ran a pub there. In 1977 we moved to a village in Oxfordshire, and Nan came to live in a cottage nearby. My Dad still lives in the area. Mum became a session singer, doing backing vocals for people like T Rex, David Bowie and many other well known acts; she was very good at it, became quite successful and that’s really how I got into music. At the age of 13 I was writing songs, and learning classical piano. My Mum and Dad’s involvement in the music scene of the day meant that our house was always a party house; however they both came from traditional working class backgrounds, and Dad’s rather Victorian attitude to bringing up children meant he could be pretty harsh at times. Given that it was the Tel. 01308 423031 The Marshwood Vale Magazine July 2021 3
